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Honestly, come on, look at my page of badges. Who in the world is supposed to quickly and easily make any sense of all that? Its overcomplicated and in the end means little to anyone. COLGeek hit the nail on the head, it just looks and feels "gimicky".
 
Adding too many badges just waters down the effect of accomplishment, if more badges are to be added then there needs to be something to identify the reputation or status of a member that has contributed for a long time to this forum. Making the tags connected to best answers also waters down the effect of being selected as the best answer in a thread , if there are several tags listed and the best answer means your credited with multiple best answers then it can cheapen it.
There needs to be a way to identify veteran contributers that have given solid support to this forum so that when a person asks for help he can know that the person responding is someone to trust. I have seen some bonehead advice given in the forum and we need to protect those asking for help from these types so they are not getting further in trouble by creating new issues from bad advice.

However this is not easily done and while we had a points based system in the previous forum design it also was not perfect but people were used to it. Maybe it going to take a few more adjustments to get this design working as good or better. All we can do is make constructive suggestions instead of many complaints. It's easier to complain and not as easy to come up with ideas but somebody may come up with something that will just work.
 
if you're worried about multiple tags causing multiple best answers and watering down the system then i have two options;

-raise the limits to make badges harder to get

-make it so that you can only get one BA credit towards a badge if multiple tags are listed. in such a case make it so that the person getting the BA can pick which they want (or just have it auto select to the lowest point rating category to make it easier)
 
I agree with most of inzone’s last post,
However I am reminded of the saying “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear “ The new format is staying Joe has already said as much.
That leads me to surmise that most of the things that are causing people issues and compelling them to post complaints will also be staying.

Yes absolutely we need to make a conscious decision, do we want to get behind the new forum and back it as we did the old one, with constructive and helpful input and contributions to the user base ? However constructive criticism and complaints are just as valuable as suggestions and input.
Joe is our conduit to those who have the final say in what actually happens around here and if we don’t give him our honest opinions to feedback then we will be as guilty as anyone when this on-going update turns out to be less than we hoped for once the dust has settled.
Its true some of the feedback is more of a rant and less constructive or constructed than we would otherwise wish. ( I can hold my hands up to that from time to time) This is still factual valuable feedback.
 
Ok so some things I would like to see are, in no particular order.

1. The ability to know if someone is online or not.
2. I didn't like this idea at first however Mini Mods/Helpers or the old community Reporter status being awarded to people who Moderation think would be suitable,This would need to be at a very limited power level and would give Toms a tested pool of users to elect new Mods from should the need arise. Possible powers that I think would assist, Closing threads, removing double posts when they come across them, basically general house keeping abilities that can easily be dealt with as and when rather than contacting Moderation.
3. Voting up or down of comments on a thread. Possibly ten + votes could become an achievement point/Ba towards the relevant badge? That way when there are multiple useful answers on a thread its possible for more than a single poster to get credit.

Thinking outside the box and as a way of mixing the whole Ba issue up how about Ba's acting like points with a selection of specialist badges that you can select yourself and buy in exchange for Ba points ?

Things I would like to see changed.

1. The number of Ba's required to select best answer increased with the user also needing to have at least a second tier badge in the relevant theme, this changes depending on the theme but is usually about 20.
2. The mouse over area is more of a hindrance than a useful feature. I suggest smaller relevant badges displayed under the Avatar. If people want to see more info on the user they can click on the name.

Mac :)
 
I also would like to see voting, but it would need to be watched first before being used to award additional BA points. It does seem like a reasonable way for the community to know if someone knows what he's talking about, except that then you'd need to be certain those who are voting are also qualified.
 


I understand your concerns about how qualified someone is.
This goes hand in hand with my wish that a user should attain a certain competence in a given theme before being able to select a BA.
Maybe the same system could be used to allow someone to vote on a topic ?

As it is we have no idea how competent a lot of the people selecting best answers are, logically if we are not to do anything to address this issue or don't see it as an issue etc,then voting should be considered in a similar vein.

Mac :)
 
online status icon... good idea.. i was thinking about mentioning that myself actually.

mini mods... i agree that it could be useful however it could also be abused. i think this should be on a per-person basis. ie like you mentioned about the community reporters.

voting up or down... this one i dont agree with. have you ever seen the news comments area? this feature gets abused heavily at times. what i would suggest instead of an up/down system is instead keeping it positive. ie a +1 system. similar to this would be a thank you system. the points from either could be displayed below the user. ie +1'd 500 times or 500 thank you points. while it can still be abused (if not limited in some way) it at least will not hide posts (lets just say for some reason its a qualified answer but the readers just dont agree with it).

 
You know when hey did the overhaul there were some nice features added that I think helped improve the overall use of the forum. However as with all overhauls or redesign there can be things that didn't work out or were not a good idea and when that happens there can be fixes or adjustments that can be made to take care of this and get it on track to being the improvement that was intended.
We've not had "mini-mods" before but have had community reporters so do we need mini-mods? Probably not but an experimental set number of a few can be set up to see how it works out. There are times when a concentrated effort is required to help out with a task that Joe needs to be done in a certain time frame. The thing you done want is confusion of who is supposed to do what and the members not knowing who to take direction from.
I hope that this next upgrade will take care of a few of these things and we can see progress being made so that all can be encouraged that real efforts are being made to address these concerns. This will help with more suggestions to be made once members see that the steps necessary to make this forum even better then it already is can and will happen.
 
@ssddx,
I think there will always be concerns regarding misuse or abuse.
I also think that we are quite lucky here at Toms that we don't get that many dedicated PITA posters, are we just lucky or are we well protected by our moderation team ?
Either way any system will have a potential for abuse, we just need to be vigilant and assist by using the report abuse button where we see a need and trust in Joe and the moderation team to respond to any issues.

@ inzone,

I hope that this next upgrade will take care of a few of these things and we can see progress being made so that all can be encouraged that real efforts are being made to address these concerns. This will help with more suggestions to be made once members see that the steps necessary to make this forum even better then it already is can and will happen.
Click to expand...

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Mac :)
 
On the mini-mods theme, I think allowing them to remove advertising/scamming posts (and associated users) would be a good idea. You'd need some sort of monitoring, but maybe someone who has sent at least 50 valid (i.e. acted upon) abuse reports could gain it.

EDIT: Surely preventing duplicate posts could be done in software; find last post on a page and if they're equal don't add the new one.
 
Most spam is dealt with by banning the spammer in question, for Mini-Mods to effectively control spam they would need that power. If they were to just act as a referral team and just passing it along to the Mods, then it would effectively be as it now as we already have an automated system for that.

The problem with having some single authority having the power to select BA's is that there are a lot of threads on this forum, over a lot of topics.
Even with the weight of the mod team and a legion of Mini-Mods, most of our day would be selecting BA's in topics we may not even know anything about.
Quite simply its a massive workload.

I'm not against the concept of Mini-Mods, its just a question of figuring out their power and responsibilities and having it done in a way that minimizes potential abuse and isn't ultimately pointless.
 
Most spam is dealt with by banning the spammer in question, for Mini-Mods to effectively control spam they would need that power.
Click to expand...

That's what I meant; I don't see much point in me sending a abuse report for something mundane, which will then sit around for a while (possibly aquiring further abuse reports (do duplicate reports get deleted when the thread is deleted?)), before being looked at again, and then deleted.

I'd suggest arming those with a large number of valid abuse reports with a 'Mark as spam' button that would delete the thread and block the poster. No power for anything else, but this would probably take the majority of the work off the mods.

I expect there's a relatively low number of people who send the majority of reports, and this would stop the double handling waste of resources, freeing time for more productive uses.
 
I agree that we cant really have extra people(Mini Mods) having access to punitive powers, spam needs to be dealt with through the correct channels so that information can be collected and acted upon.
How viable the Mini Mod idea actually is and if so what they would actually do has to be down to the moderation team to decide.
Maybe it could be little more than a title, a stepping stone to possible Modship later. perhaps the prospect of having Mini Mod under their Avatar would work in the same way the badges do in encouraging users to report more ?
I guess there would need to be a limit as well ? We cant have half the forum being Mini Mods now... can we ?

As far as the BA issue goes I don't see it changing given feedback we have had so far.
I would think its being policed by exception and again only my opinion and guess work but I would think most people are not actively seeking incorrect or incomplete best answers to either report or deselect. As manofchalk said the workload to vet it all would be ludicrous.
This means that given the differing time zones and forums and sub forums the quick fire posts and dodgy best answer selections are probably getting burred by other posts long before anyone even see's half of them.
Still its one of the metrics the masters want ticked off and we are told its working as it is so as I already said I cant see it changing in the near future.

Mac :)
 
It seems to me that spam is probably the forum's biggest overall problem. More people able to kill it would not be a bad thing.
You could almost make award of those powers almost automatic, based on number of times they've reported spam to the Mod team, AND it was an accurate assessment so the Mods killed it.
 
One poster's Spam is another poster's link to a valuable piece of advice. I may recommend a product for data recovery and in the same thread, have later to delete several others. Who's to say my product is better. answer - I am because mine was free and not linked to a site that wants to take money off our posters.

Sometimes, dealing with Spam involves reading a poster's recent history - especially when considering a ban from Tom's. Mods can do that and MiniMods would have to be able to do the same. I see problems there in having two strata. Maybe folks being considered as future Mods could cut their teeth in such a way.
 
I agree with Saga Lout here, I obviously don't know exactly how it works but I would guess that there are times when just deleting spam posts would be counter productive ? Maybe the poster was being monitored or Toms wanted to run some checks on where it was coming from ?

In response to jpishgar,
I would suggest starting low key with the ability to delete duplicate threads and possibly close threads, I'm thinking about Obvious piracy issues such as can I have a Free W7 Ultimate key type posts here. If we did decide to allow deletion of spam then it should be limited to the obvious advertising links that have before now flooded the forum live feed. For this reason I would think that having the ability forum wide would be the best thing.

In practice I guess this would mean giving the ability to delete threads and close threads full stop ? I don't know how specific and tightly you can focus the powers ?

Those chosen would have to be, well basically trusted, and then monitored.
Give them the powers and the brief on how you want them used what is and is not expected and then keep an eye on how they conduct themselves.

I realize there are concerns however careful selection and monitoring should I think reduce the chance of any issues especially if they are given a tight and specific remit as mentioned above.
I am sure those chosen would have the sense to double check with a full Mod before taking action if there was an issue they were unsure about.

Mac :)
 
So have it hidden/archived.

Besides, someone posting "My neighbour just made $10272 this month at home,,, see aosihg.com" is pretty obviously spam, and has no value other than for tuning the spam filters.

Ads are another matter, but I still think we shouldn't be condoning obvious marketing for a company's products.

Limit it only to threads where no-one else has posted to?
 


Mundane spam gets automatically reported, we know if the usual stuff is posted. Just before I deleted a fair lot of it.
My main issue is that banning people is the Mods greatest power, and having an authority below the Mods with it doesn't sit right with me. Especially if the position is given by filling a certain criteria like a badge does now.

Valid spam reports isn't a good metric IMO. Anyone can hang out in the Entertainment or Windows XP board and tag tons of spam as it rolls through, while anyone in say Systems will barely see any.
It would also give an advantage to people who just happen to live outside the Mods timezones, we deal with it fairly quickly while were on.
Its too much based on chance and opportunity, and can be gamed easily.



Have the MiniMod concept almost as a training program for becoming a full Mod? Have them in terms of powers basically a Mod, but any/some Mod powers they use have to be approved by a full Moderator. That would help a fair bit with the integration of new Moderators into the fold, learning how it is done but they have a safety net if they make the wrong decision.
 
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